New Jersey Wildfire, Smoke, and Air Quality Map

Fire season and landscape

Pine Barrens fire season peaks in spring, and large fires there are a normal part of the system rather than a rarity; the Jones Road fire of April 2025 burned roughly 15,000 acres in Ocean County. In summer, Canadian wildfire smoke has pushed air quality into the unhealthy range across North Jersey several times since 2023.

The Pinelands National Reserve anchors South Jersey with pitch pine, scrub oak, and some of the fastest-drying sandy fuels on the East Coast, much of it managed as Wharton, Brendan T. Byrne, and Bass River state forests. North Jersey is a different landscape, wooded ridge country along the Kittatinny Ridge and the Highlands, while the coast carries flood exposure, as Sandy showed in 2012.

• Pine Barrens fires move quickly through cured fuels, so the wildfire perimeter layer paired with 24-hour hotspots shows both the mapped edge and where heat is still being detected.
• The New Jersey Forest Fire Service runs prescribed burns through late winter and early spring, and hotspot detections inside the Pinelands in that window are often planned fire.
• Sandy Pinelands soils dry quickly between rains, and the drought layer shows when South Jersey is running drier than the rest of the state.